Accounting textbooks in seventeenth century England

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Osamu Kojima
PROFESSOR OF ACCOUNTING KWANSEI GAKUIN UNIVERSITY
ACCOUNTING TEXTBOOKS IN SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND - Chiefly About Collins' Work -*
In Accounting in England and Scotland: 1543-1800, Professor B. S. Yamey writes, "In the 1630s there was a spurt in the publication of works on accounting: Carpenter's Excellent Instruction came in 1632; in the next year the third (and earliest known) edition of Ralph Handson's broadside, Analysis of Merchants Accompts, was issued; and in 1635 came the first edition of Richard Dafforne's Merchants Mirrour,.... They mark the high point of Dutch influence on English writing in our field; after this group of publications, direct Dutch influence becomes progressively attenuated." (p. 167) He continues, "After Dafforne, books on accounting appeared in in-creasing numbers .... between 1641 and 1740, over 30 new authors contributed books on accounting .... It is difficult to trace foreign influence on the books in English published after Dafforne and his immediate successors. The principal treatises of the last quarter of the seventeenth and the whole of the eighteenth century were es-sentially home-grown, with a preponderance of the best works be-ing published in Scotland, or in England by Scottish authors." (p. 170) He refers to Robert Colinson's Idea Rationaria, 1683, as the first book on accounting published in Scotland. In Richard Brown's A History of Accounting and Accountants, 1905, J. Row Fogo says that Dafforne was succeeded by John Collins and Abraham Liset, "who both gave their instructions perfectly competently, but not in a manner which calls for particular notice." (p. 155)
John Collins' An Introduction To Merchants Accounts was pub-lished in London in 1653. The second edition was published under the title An Introduction to Merchant-Accompts in 1674 in London. This article will examine Collins' textbooks to consider the influence of merchants' current trading activities upon the accounting texts of those times.
•Based upon a paper delivered at the Second World Congress of Accounting Historians.